congrats on a new episode, nice to see it's still going strong,
Im still playing the game, but, sad to say, like a deja vu from ep2-3 the game still seem to suffer from the exact same problems as the other chapters,
and never before have the game felt so much like work when solving puzzles, traveling from place to place, back and forth, east and west,, pick up this, give this to him, get another item etc etc, it does feel very flat, monotone and trivial to be honest, where is the creativity of puzzles and the originality..?
even if the bugs and screen transitions seem to have been ironed out, I have to admit it has become a painfully dull gaming experience, and I hate to say it but Im going to have to wait for a walkthrough before finishing this, that's how boring the back and forth and fetch and bring have become to me. Cause I really want to see the rest of the game, the atmosphere, the dialogue etc, that's still worth playing TSL for imo,
but it surprises me hearing the designers intending for puzzles and sequences to be frustrating and essentially 'bad'!!.. what!

and because the outcome will then make you feel even more grateful, that you eventually got through it...
it's kinda like saying, hey, if your hamster died you'll be so sad that buying a new one will make you delirious with joy....
that's cuckoo game design logic if you ask me...
considering how easy it would be to fix this by implementing a more in depth map transportation or in-game hint system (so you don't have to travel to 10 places just to get the final hint), would have made the game so much more fun and enjoyable.
Makes me sad thinking about how nice it would have been if you could concentrate on puzzles and story and not transportation and walking/running..
and you could really enjoy what makes it good, the nice talks, the atmosphere and parts of the cool backstory, and puzzles that aren't that bad at all, just a bit unoriginal, flat and trivial. Actually a lot of 'good' adv games have the same thing, often far worse puzzles too than TSL, but they're still considered quality games because of the solid, open dynamic gameplay lifting the whole thing up,,
in TSL it's the opposite, the slow gameplay makes the okay puzzles actually seem boring and syrupy,
It doesn't matter how the plot and story goes, if the gameplay is slow and tedious the puzzles and plot will feel the same,, and you've got a problem...
but Im repeating myself since the last chapter. It's the same criticism, and considering 99 percent of the team aren't to blame, it's not really fair to say it's the team's fault,, like someone said on this thread; a bad design is a bad design, and if it doesn't change over time it makes for a bad designer,
and if that feels unfair to say you don't have to look further than the many game reviews of TSL all over the web and how most non die hard KQ adventure game fans see TSL; it's getting more and more slaughtered for every chapter released

so maybe it's time to do something radical for chapter 5 to substantiate the 10 years TSL has been in development, and all the team members who have come and gone, but never really felt like they had a say other than the color of textures and the design of a lamp...
maybe creating a truly fun, effective gameplay would be the best way to justify that, hmm
